The Genius of Trees: How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world

'Sublime ... It is a true masterpiece' DAILY TELEGRAPH, *****
'Mind-blowing' GUARDIAN
‘Wondrous. Gives us trees as we've never seen them before’ ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding

**A TELEGRAPH, COUNTRY LIFE, NEW YORKER and CRITIC BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025**

The Genius of Trees tells the mind-expanding story of the inventive and astonishing ways trees learned to shape our natural world.

Over hundreds of millions of years, from prehistoric forests to the trees around us today, we see trees using fire as a reproductive tool, harnessing large mammals to spread their seeds (but poisoning smaller, less useful mammals), and splitting rock to create fertile ground in barren landscapes.

Because trees, we discover, manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends. From the laurel cloud-forests of the Canary Islands to the magnificent sex-shifting oaks of Iraq, from the giant sequoias of California to the carbon-spinning junipers of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border – trees sculpt their environments.

At once transporting and expert, The Genius of Trees gives us hope for the future. It enables us to see trees, for the first time, not as victims but as agents of change in a grand ecological narrative – and as leading actors in the great drama of life on earth.

‘Exceptional’ ROBIN LANE FOX, Financial Times Gardening Columnist
'If I was dazzled by nature and in awe of trees before, I now know how much we are indebted to them’ KIRSTY WARK
'Full of wonder and revelation ... Highly recommended' SUE STUART-SMITH, author of The Well Gardened Mind